InStep Coaching Blog
 

July 15, 2006

How To Keep Your Goals In Focus

Filed under: Articles

Someone recently posed the question to me - “Do my goals need to be written down?” My answer was, “If writing something down is a way to help remind you, then do it.”

You fail to reach your goals for several reasons. One of those reasons is a lack of focus. Without focus, you tend to put off the most appropriate actions necessary to move forward, while engaging in activities that are least likely to get you results.

Today focus is perhaps more important than ever!

In this age of information overload, you are bombarded with more priorities, ideas, perspectives, and one more expert’s way of doing things, than ever before. This represents a lot of bunny trails to travel, and makes achieving your goals more complicated. For most, this is a daunting challenge.

Just how distracted are you?

Let’s say your goal is to build a brick barbeque pit during the weekend. Come Saturday morning, you run the risk of becoming distracted by dabbling in the garden, doing the laundry, cleaning the pool, opening the mail, reading the newspaper, watching football and mowing the lawn. As a result, you’re not likely to get the barbeque built. You can also apply this scenario to running your business and working your job, where distractions are present every day. (more…)

July 5, 2006

Perfection And Head Cheese

Filed under: Articles

During my banking career, it must have been obvious to one of my peers that I had a “perfection” problem, because I remember being given a Reader’s Digest article entitled ” Aim for Success, Not Perfection.” I’ve carried that article with me for over 18 years, and come to think of it, the “subject” of the article as well.

Most of us work for our living, either as an owner of a company, manager or employee, and we all engage in the delivery of some product, service or both. In the process of doing our work and delivering our goods, we’re actually creating or producing what it is that we deliver. That may be a report, a legal document, a widget, a process, information, assistance, or a myriad of other things.

As we engage in our enterprise, there is a measure of “quality”, that goes into the process. This can be a function of standards, expectations or status quo, all of which are in place to enhance the success of the enterprise. However, another very common element often present is PERFECTION.

Perfection, as it relates to the healthy pursuit of excellence by people who want to meet high standards, is a good thing. Perfection, as a roadblock to taking action because your product or service is never “good enough”, is counter- productive. This can be rooted in beliefs about failure, self-esteem, self-worth and fear of judgment or rejection. (more…)